Veneziano had arrived in Rome by 1516 and begun to work with Marcantonio Raimondi and Marco Dente da Ravenna, engraving the drawings of Raphael and his students. This print is probably based on a design by Raphael or Giulio Romano. Most of the figures in the compositionincluding the drunken Silenus, the dancing Pan, and the maenad with swirling draperiesare free adaptations from an ancient Roman sarcophagus that was in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore during the sixteenth century.

This charming small print is a free variation on the scene carved on a sarcophagus now in Woburn Abbey (Bedfordshire, England) but formerly in Rome and a favorite of Renaissance artists. Veneziano, like the other artists who worked with Raphael, was an enthusiastic student of the antique; he produced ornamental prints that reflect the painted grotesques of Nero's Golden House as well as a series of engravings of classical vases.